Dancing in the Dark
by Mala
Summary: Max Jones hates where she's been and Coleman Radcliff hates where he is. Barbara Jean Jones hates where she is and AJ Quartermaine hates everything. So, where can they go together besides straight to Hell? *COMPLETE*
1. Private Dancer

Title: "Dancing in the Dark" 1/?  
  
Author: Mala  
  
E-mail: malisita@yahoo.com  
  
Fandom: "General Hospital"  
  
Rating/Classification: 'R', AU, language, sexual situations, C/M, BJ/AJ,  
  
Disclaimer: Oh, boy. I REALLY don't own them.  
  
Summary: In a slightly alternate timeline, Max Jones hates where she's been and Coleman Radcliff hates where he is. Barbara Jean Jones hates where she is and AJ Quartermaine hates... everything. So, where can they go together besides straight to Hell?  
  
"I'll shake this world off my shoulder." --Bruce Springsteen.  
  
The first thing out of her little rosebud mouth was the God's honest truth. The next two things were outrageous lies.  
  
"My name's Max. I'm eighteen. And I want to strip."  
  
She pulled a crumpled birth certificate from the back pocket of her ripped, dusty, jeans, and he didn't have to glance down at it to know the dates were carefully smudged.  
  
Mariah Maxmiliana Jones. Yep, her name was 'Max' all right, a name that didn't seem to fit this sharp-mouthed little pixie doll with a mess of pony-tailed blond hair. But she was fifteen if she was a day. Sixteen at the most. And he'd never known *any* woman, no matter how old, who actually wanted to strip for a living.  
  
Maybe if she had said "I need a job." Or "I need to earn some cash fast." Yeah, he would've bought that. But girls like Miss Max Jones...? They didn't *want* to be strippers. The jeans were in bad shape but they were designer. Her boots genuine leather. And the stone that hung on a silver filigree chain around her neck...? Well, it wasn't no cubic zirconia. Girls like Miss Max...they grew up to be doctors or lawyers or...god forbid...*cops*.  
  
Coleman Radcliff, as a semi-respectable strip club owner, had very little use for cops. They never tipped the girls and refused to look the other way on his parking tickets.  
  
He sighed, hoping the smile quirking on his lips wasn't *too* smug. The girl thought she had him snowed...and he wasn't about to disabuse her of the notion. "You're not from around here, are you?"  
  
"Texas," she said, grabbing the birth certificate off his desk and shoving it back into her pocket with whatever else she'd stolen from her mommy and daddy.  
  
He'd meant this side of Port Charles. Courtland Street and beyond. It wasn't Hell's kitchen...just its bathroom. But, hey, Texas worked as an answer. It was a big place. Nicely vague.  
  
"So, you come here from Texas and you want to take your clothes off at my humble establishment." The Oasis was, in his opinion, not really humble. Just a shithole. And he hated paying protection to the Five Families to keep it running. But it was *his* shithole and he was making do. "Those are good goals to have at eighteen."  
  
"It's better money than waitressing." Fire sparked in her dark brown eyes. *Now* she knew he was patronizing her. "I was on the drill team in high school. I can dance," she snapped. But her lower lip quivered.  
  
Okay, he'd give her fifteen now. She'd dropped out as a sophomore. And she wore entirely too much make-up.  
  
He laughed. He didn't know whether he wanted to give her a spanking or a set of pom-poms. "Don't think you ever cheered topless, Baby Doll. You just don't seem the type."  
  
"How would you know what 'type' I am? Nobody knows my 'type'! Nobody knows what I'm capable of. Not even my pa--" and she cut herself off mid-tirade, mid-pace, just when she was getting good and wound up, clamping her mouth tightly shut and taking her frustration out on the leg of his desk instead.  
  
He had no idea why Lorena had let this kid into his office. It was probably payback for suggesting she give D.A. Baldwin a lap dance when he'd come in for a photo op during his campaign to crack down on adult entertainment. But he wasn't complaining. This was the most adult entertainment *he'd* had in a long time.  
  
He guessed that she'd stockpiled her allowance. Maybe worked up enough for a bus ticket. And why good old PC? Maybe she had relatives here? Maybe she'd just picked the name of the town off the bus schedule because the first boy she'd ever let pet her above the waist was named Chuck. But there was no way in Hell she'd come all this way just to get naked for his drunken clientele.  
  
Proving that...well...that was going to be an unholy amount of fun.  
  
He leaned back in his chair, folding one hand over the other, and gave her his most benevolent smile. "Well, all right Miss Texas...I guess we best get down to the audition."  
  
Her face went, predictably, pale. "Au-audition?"  
  
"Yep." He carelessly waved his hand. "Come on, let's see the goods."  
  
Her hands stalled at the edge of her pretty pink tank top.  
  
He gave her two minutes before she bolted and ran.  
  
Oh, yeah. This was going to be fun.  
  
***  
  
Whoever said that having young parents was the ideal...was full of shit.  
  
Max Jones could trace all her problems...including the one staring at her right at this very moment...back to the fact that her parents were young and adventurous and ultra-cool. And she hated them.  
  
Felicia Jones wasn't the kind of mother who baked you cookies and told you your top was too low-cut. Frisco Jones was too busy playing Super Spy to tell her she was grounded until she pulled a B in Math. Collectively, they were the kind of parents who decided to con gun-runners in Columbia instead of buying her a car for her sixteenth birthday...and they'd dropped her off at her grandmother's ranch in Texas shortly thereafter.  
  
She loved Mariah. She did. But it was a little late to pretend she could take Johnny Q. Austin to the junior prom and ace her SATs.  
  
She knew how to fire three different kinds of semi-automatic weapons. She knew the capitals of every country in Africa because she'd lived in each for at least a month. And she could drive a Land Rover with her eyes closed... even though she had no license.  
  
One thing, however, that she did NOT know how to do...was strip.  
  
Sure, she could take off her clothes. Unbutton them. Before bed. Before a bath. To change into something else.  
  
But she had never been on drill team. And she didn't want to be a stripper.  
  
She just wanted to get the Hell away from her life.  
  
And, well, this was about as far as it got.  
  
The man...Coleman...was staring at her, expectantly. And the smile under the trim mustache was raw and wicked. Daring. He was daring her to do it.  
  
She knew he was on to her. If there was one useful thing, besides how to handle a revolver, her father had taught her, it was how to spot bullshit ...and how to know when someone smelled yours. He probably thought he had her all figured out. Lost little rich girl, down on her luck, who would chicken out at the last minute. He was going to tease her until she ran away and then have a good chuckle with his little dark-haired hostess after hours.  
  
He was right about the first two things. But the last...? No way.  
  
Max Jones did *not* chicken out.  
  
She cocked her head, staring at him and trying to guess his age. Thirty-five maybe? Older? Definitely around her father's age. And he was scruffy and hairy and had a really hideous orange shirt on. But he wasn't like the guys on the Greyhound who smelled like gin and mothballs and tried to feel her up at the rest stops. Or the boys back at the mission schools who had stared at her like she was something alien and then said dopey things like, "I love your voice, Maxie. Say my name, please?"  
  
She had a great voice. A sex voice, she'd been told. Husky and faintly drugged. Unfortunately, finding work as a 'telephone actress' wasn't as easy as something like this.  
  
Yeah. This was easy. It had to be.  
  
She smiled at him and gestured towards the battered radio on the shelf behind him as her fingers danced around the hem of her top. "You want an audition? Fine...turn on some music," she taunted as she began to lift it.  
  
He choked. Audibly. Slammed forward in his chair instead of back to flip on the radio. And his eyes went black. She'd heard the expression before, but never actually seen it. They darkened in degrees until she could almost see herself reflected. "If you want to dance, Baby Doll...you'd better be prepared for what that means," he growled. "Because I ain't puttin' my club on the line so some underage virgin can get her kicks."  
  
He was really kind of hot when he was pissed off. But the words...the words...no, she couldn't have that. No. "I am NOT a virgin!" she huffed, panicked. "And I am NOT underage."  
  
He stood up, moving around the desk, and the hands that had brushed hers while trading the birth certificate were powerful and clenched. "You ain't careful and somebody's going to make at least one of those lies the truth," he warned, huskily.  
  
Even as the shiver ran up her spine, she felt her jaw set solid. "Who says I want to be careful?" she demanded.  
  
And then she took off her shirt.  
  
***  
  
He'd seen a lot of breasts in his time. Big ones. Small ones. Nipples barely covered by pasties. Tassles. You name it, he'd seen it. And they rarely, if ever, incited him to heart failure.  
  
But all he could think as he closed his eyes and prayed to Mother Mary and tried to remember how to breathe was..."Doesn't the girl believe in bras?" Well, that and..."Holyshitshitshitshit."  
  
There was challenge in those slightly-slanted dark eyes. The tables had turned and now it was her patronizing him. She was daring him to look away, to grab the tank top off the floor and fling it back at her. To kick her pert little ass out the door.  
  
Which meant she already knew he wouldn't do it.  
  
Miss Max Jones had thought she had him snowed...and she'd been right.  
  
Legal issues were floating above his head like miniature angels. Lawsuits. Raids. The loss of his liquor license. And on top of those angels were dirty-faced little devils who wanted him to strip the rest of her clothes off and see if she was as perfect and proportioned all over as those gorgeous, round, B-cup tits would imply.  
  
"I gotta tell you, Baby Doll," he heard himself whisper, jaggedly. "Ain't nobody in their right mind going to believe you're eighteen."  
  
She leaned forward...and suddenly that amazing chest was pressed up against him and her arm was going around his neck. Before he could even yank it away or push her back or say anything, she had him. "Then I'll just have to drive them crazy," she whispered against his mouth.  
  
He would bet his life on the fact that she'd only kissed one boy in her entire short existence. Some sloppy school boy out behind the goalposts on the football field. Chuck. And he would bet his soul on the fact that this kiss...this hot, sweet, wine of a kiss...was sending him straight to Hell.  
  
He kissed her back for as long as his temporary insanity would allow...teeth and tongue and swallowing her shocked little moan as her nipples went hard...and then...*then* he pulled away, gasping and hoping the edges of his shirt covered his own totally whacked out and inappropriate response.  
  
"There is no fucking way you're going up on my stage," he assured, his throat constricted and his voice like an unpaved road.  
  
"But...no...you can't...I have to...I'll go somewhere else if I have to...there are OTHER places in Port Charles, I know there are!" Her pretty little face crumpled and her chest heaved and he, damn it all to Hell, had to look away again when he interrupted.  
  
He had to look away, but he had to cave. Had to fall. Had to admit he'd lost to her...this brave little girl with a birth certificate in her pocket and a monkey on her back.  
  
He fiercely shook his head, grabbing her wrist. "You want some extra cash? You want to dance for it? Then you dance for *me*." He swallowed her moan again, her mouth, the fresh taste of her innocence and her determination. "Just me. You got that, Baby Doll?"  
  
And, yeah, she got that.  
  
Because her tiny little fingers began to work the zipper on her jeans.  
  
***  
  
One of her early Christmases in Port Charles...before Mom and Dad had completely lost their minds and gone Mr.&Mrs. Bond...she'd been playing with her cousins Lucas and BJ. She remembered it well. She couldn't have been more than five.  
  
"I have a penis!" Lucas had announced, abruptly, putting down his Tonka truck.  
  
She and BJ hadn't been impressed, even then, by a man's need to point out the obvious. They'd giggled, wondering, "So? Big deal!"  
  
A game of "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" had occurred. It had been educational, since she still remembered it, but underwhelming. At least until her aunt Bobbie had interrupted, given them a lecture while trying not to laugh, and then shooed them down to the kitchen for ice cream.  
  
The ice cream...*that* had been the big thrill. Especially since Lucas had to eat the lame non-sugary kind. She figured it had been just punishment for the show-and-tell.  
  
Coleman was no little boy. He didn't need to announce anything. It was right there beneath the fly of his jeans. But here she was playing "I'll show you mine" anyway. Because he would pay her. He would pay her to do this just for him...not for drunken creeps in the show room.  
  
His hand closed over hers, stalling her fumbling with the button and zipper of her own jeans. And he called her "Baby Doll" again in that voice...that voice that was a hundred times more of a "sex voice" than her own. Her dad had called her any number of sweet nicknames while he sang her to sleep...Sweetheart, Baby Girl, Darling...but none of them...none of them... had sounded quite like this. "Baby Doll" didn't make her feel like anyone's little dress-up toy with fluttery eyelashes. Anyone's precious little daughter.  
  
Just like the kiss hadn't made her feel like anything except a grown woman.  
  
And maybe he read that thought in her eyes...just like he'd read everything else the minute she'd walked in...because he leaned down and kissed her again and it was her...her that was being driven crazy. He'd tasted faintly like smoke and whiskey the first time...and his mustache had tickled...and she had no idea how to move her lips, where to put her tongue, but he'd shown her. Now...now it was like she was suddenly an expert because she couldn't get enough and she was melting-hot inside and arching up on her toes so she could crawl right in.  
  
His hand splayed against her bare back and she was glad because her knees were quivering and she wasn't sure she could stand.  
  
And then, all of a sudden, he wasn't kissing her anymore. He was pushing her away, breathing hard, and she felt the same strangled need for air in herself. "Not tonight," he ground out. "Not tonight."  
  
She reached for something to hold on to as the panic set in again and the closest thing was his shirt. Her fingers closed around the soft material. "But..."  
  
"Come back tomorrow, Miss Max Jones." He closed his eyes and slowly lifted each of her fingers off his shirt...until he was free, and then he turned his back to her. He leaned against the desk and she wondered...she wondered what it was he couldn't show her. "The club's closed tomorrow...I'll put you up on the stage and see what you can do."  
  
"Coleman..." How could she tell him that she'd used up all of her guts tonight? That she'd learned so many new things that her entire body was one live nerve ending? That she wasn't sure she could try this again?  
  
He made a sound that was part-groan, part-sob. Desperate and hungry and it made her want to touch his face and lick his jaw. "Baby Doll...I can't let you do this tonight..."  
  
"But why?"  
  
"'Cause I'm in a bad way. Worse than I ever seen myself. I need a day to get my shit back together." And he laughed. When he turned back to look at her, his eyes were black again. A look she would now, forever, know meant he wanted her. He wanted her so badly it turned off his lights. He reached out ...and then pulled his hand back before it could make contact with her skin. "If you take the rest of your clothes off right now...I'm going to fuck you till you can't walk. So run, Baby Doll. Run as far as you can."  
  
Her legs wouldn't move. She couldn't even take one step, much less run.  
  
This was as far from her life as she could get. Two steps from the only man who had said "fuck" to her in a way that made her clench and want to see it through.  
  
Her laugh sounded brittle and faintly drunk to her own ears. She wondered what he would do if she went ahead and took off her pants. But she didn't have to wonder because she knew. He meant it. And he meant it when he was telling her to run.  
  
"I...I would..." she whispered, shakily, reaching down to pick up her tank top and pull it over her head. "But...but I have nowhere to go."  
  
She couldn't exactly picture herself showing up at Aunt Bobbie's brownstone and bunking down with BJ with her swollen lips and screaming nerves. Especially since it would facilitate an immediate call to Texas and there would be no tomorrow...no tomorrow night here at the Oasis.  
  
Which was the only thing she wanted.  
  
No, she didn't want to be a stripper.  
  
But, suddenly, more than anything, she wanted to be naked for Coleman.  
  
***  
  
She was giving him those eyes. Another concentrated snowjob. Begging for it. For her legs spread wide on his desk and a spot warming his bed.  
  
And in another five minutes, he was probably going to deliver.  
  
Yep, he was going straight to Hell.  
  
And she...she was going straight out the door if he had to pick her up and carry her.  
  
"I know a place you can snag a room cheap...and they won't ask questions," he said, going back behind his desk so he at least had one barrier between himself and temptation. He scribbled down an address on the back of a receipt and tossed it, half-crumpled, into her waiting palm. "The lady behind the bar is Jake. Tell her Coleman sent you. She won't give you any trouble unless you give her some."  
  
She swallowed and he was altogether too fascinated by the movement of her pale throat. "You...you're sure you don't want me to strip tonight?"  
  
He chuckled, hoarsely. "Baby Doll, you want to slum so bad, you can come slumming all you want tomorrow. Tonight, the only plans I got involve going to church, confessing, coming home and jerking off, strangling Lorena...then going and confessing some more."  
  
She was so startled...probably by his admission that he had some religion to him...or maybe at the mental picture of him jerking his own chain...that it took the coy little schemer right out of her...and she blushed beet red. "Oh. Oh...okay. Right, then. Tomorrow."  
  
Fifteen. He was back to fifteen. Shit.  
  
And as she stumbled towards the door, her hand closed on it's edge and she turned. She turned and let him have it. That curved little mouth with his kisses still clinging to it. "And by the way, Coleman...in case you were wondering...? Sixteen."  
  
The echo of the door slamming behind her...the silence in the wake of her husky laughter...and his own ridiculously raging hard-on told him there was only one thing on his list he really wanted to do at the moment.  
  
"Lorena! You dumb bitch, where the fuck are you? You're fired, you hear me? Get your shit and get out!!!"  
  
He wasn't the kind of man who hollered at his girls. He knew full well that they got enough of that shit at home from the old man they were probably keeping in beer and cigarettes. But Lorena Parker was a special case. She had no Old Man because no man was damn fool enough to live with her for very long. She'd been a whore once and it was common knowledge she'd hog-tied johns for less than adequate tips. She gave no quarter. It was why she made a damn fine hostess and a great den mother for all the girls.  
  
It was also why she was the bane of his existence.  
  
And she was calmly pouring him a drink behind the bar when he thundered into the club. "You didn't like my present?"  
  
"I like my dancers to have at least hit puberty!" he growled, sliding onto a stool and swiping the still-settling shot of Maker's Mark from her perfectly manicured and shaped fingers.  
  
"Well, I didn't get THAT inter-office memo." She stared at him with big, liquid, blue eyes. Not the least bit innocent. Just knowing. "Oh, come on...tell me you don't miss Fresh-As-a-Daisy? I thought version 2.0 would make you happy."  
  
Miss Daisy? Ha. He missed Courtney Matthews like he missed a hole in the head. Several holes in the head. And cement shoes. Between her louse of an ex-husband with his hard-on for arson and her brother and her new boyfriend's status as *the* Crime Syndicate of PC, there was nothing about the pretty blonde he missed. The Oasis had closed down for six months because of Daisy...and he'd almost wound up dead.  
  
And Max? Well, she definitely wasn't version 2.0. No daisies. She was a snap-dragon and she'd almost snapped his cock right off.  
  
"You're a real humanitarian, 'Rena," he sighed, downing the shot in one gulp and sliding the glass back for another. "But next time...? Do me a favor and *don't* do me a favor."  
  
Lorena clicked her tongue, crossing her arms on the bar and leaning her impressive rack on them. Luckily he was immune to those ample charms by now. "So, you didn't fuck her?"  
  
He choked on his next mouthful of whiskey. "Jesus! She's sixteen!" he wheezed out as fire zig-zagged down his throat and tears sprang to his eyes.  
  
"So?" She shrugged. "I started hooking at fourteen. What's your point?"  
  
He winced. "My point is...Max is not you."  
  
"That's true. She's definitely not me." Her red, red, lips twitched with smug amusement. "I was smart enough to divorce you. She's so dumb, she's coming back."  
  
It was a toss-up as to who'd been dumber. He believed that firmly. He stared up at his ex-wife and scowled.  
  
TBC. 


	2. Dance into the Fire

Title: "Dancing in the Dark" 2/?  
  
Author: Mala  
  
E-mail: malisita@yahoo.com  
  
Fandom: "General Hospital"  
  
Rating/Classification: 'R', AU, language, sexual situations, C/M, BJ/AJ,  
  
Disclaimer: Oh, boy. I REALLY don't own them.  
  
Summary: In a slightly alternate timeline, Max Jones hates where she's been and Coleman Radcliff hates where he is. Barbara Jean Jones hates where she is and AJ Quartermaine hates... everything. So, where can they go together besides straight to Hell?  
  
"I'll shake this world off my shoulder." --Bruce Springsteen.  
  
Somewhere between a plie and a pas de deux, she'd quit being BJ Jones. It didn't sound like a dancer's name. It didn't roll off the tongue. And by seventh grade, the whole "BJ" connotation had been too much to deal with. No, she didn't give blowjobs, thank you very much. And Barbie...? Well, that was a doll with big boobs and tiny feet. She had the latter...but not the former. She had a tight dancer's body, slender like a taut string...and she really hadn't been grieving when she never got past A in the cup department because there was less weight pulling her off balance when her partner lifted her above his head.  
  
So, at eighteen, planning to audition for the American Ballet Company, she was the mouthful of "Barbara Jean." Only her family still called her "BJ" and only her Uncle Luke still got her and her mom confused.  
  
She was Barbara Jean and she was going to get the Hell out of Port Charles and become the most famous ballerina in the Western Hemisphere.  
  
No more "how's the Doc, BJ?" or "Have you learned how to make Ruby's chili yet, BJ?" No more eyes watching her every time she went out on a date. She still remembered her pesky brother and her cousin Lucky punching out Sly Eckert for kissing her outside Kelly's two years ago. Well, to be fair, Lucas had just held his arms...but she still hadn't spoken to him for three weeks after that.  
  
No more "You're so sweet, BJ." "You're so good." "Your parents are lucky to have you." She was sick of being good and sweet and wanted. Half the time she wondered what it would be like to step off the street and get hit by a truck and end the flow of sugar that was lacking in her brother's life but seemed to be drowning hers.  
  
She was the one, not Lucas, in danger of a diabetic coma.  
  
Which was why she was walking into Jake's. A bar. On the "bad" side of Port Charles. Wearing one of Elizabeth Webber's stretchy little tops and a pair of Emily Quartermaine's low-slung blue jeans. And a pair of her mother's high heels. She was playing Bad Girl dress-up. She just wasn't sure it went any farther than the clothes.  
  
So, Jake's.  
  
Emily's boyfriend Zander lived in one of the rooms above the place and spent a lot of time downstairs playing pool, so it couldn't be all bad. And she was fairly certain there would be no one in the place who would ask her for Aunt Ruby's chili recipe or ask her how her father was holding out over at GH while the HMOs were moving in.  
  
It was a fairly crowded night and when she walked in, she bumped right into a blond girl heading towards the back stairs, a messenger bag clutched to her side. Someone tougher would've snapped, "Hey, watch where you're going!"... but Barbara Jean was taking baby steps, so she let the tall girl in the tight jeans disappear without any displays of bitchdom.  
  
And she inched through a couple of guys playing pool, ignoring them when they whistled. One cat-called to her back, "Hey, come back and rub some more, Sweetheart, I didn't get off."  
  
Yeah, there was something Dr. Tony Jones's daughter heard every day.  
  
She giggled even as she turned on one heel and flipped him the bird. "There you go. Suck on THAT."  
  
And then she continued on her way up to the bar. That was one went if they wanted to give up sweetness for something harder, right? And she would've ended up there, ordering something beer-like, if, like something out of a bad teen movie, somebody hadn't called her name.  
  
"BJ?!?"  
  
And not even the *right* name. Her stupid baby non-ballerina name.  
  
A man shouldered through the crush of would-be pool sharks and as he neared, his dark brown eyes narrowed. "Barbara Jean Jones...I *thought* that was you. What the Hell are you doing here?"  
  
Expensive pants and sweater, dark brown hair, a slight slur, and a tumbler of something amber clutched in one fist. Yeah, it was definitely AJ Quartermaine.  
  
She groaned. At least she knew her best friend's brother was the last person on earth who would ask about her dad. They hated each other's guts. But there went her quest for naughty anonymity. "Hi, AJ. I'm, uh, meeting Zander and Emily to shoot some pool," she lied, brightly, crossing her fingers behind her back.  
  
"I hate that guy," AJ confided, in that way that only drunken people did. Like the time her father had leaned over during dinner and whispered, too loud, that he thought her stepsister Carly was a two-bit whore. That was the last time Mom had served wine with dinner. And Dad had moved out a week later. "Zander..." AJ continued, with, thankfully, no idea that she was thinking about the woman he and her father had once had in common, "He's a punk. He's a punk kid who's gonna mess up Em's life."  
  
Em had breast cancer. There was really little chance her life could be any more messed up. "She and Zander love each other," Barbara Jean reminded, softly. "Shouldn't that be all that matters?"  
  
"Love? Ha." AJ gestured with his glass emphatically. "Love is a bullshit story, Kiddo, that they tell you about so you can sleep in your cozy bed at night. I don't believe in it. Not anymore."  
  
"Then what DO you believe in?" she couldn't help but ask.  
  
He stared at the liquor like it was his reason for living. "This," he said, sardonically. "Drinking." And something cold dropped over his eyes. "Fucking." When he looked back at her, she wasn't even sure he could see her... or if he did...that he recognized her. "Fire." He smiled and it a beautiful smile, dimples and all, but it was terrifying, too. "I believe in fire."  
  
He was talking about something hot, burning, but all of a sudden, she was cold. And she shivered. AJ was an alcoholic. It was rumored he'd set at least two major fires in the last three years. And it was common knowledge that he'd stalked his own wife.  
  
If this was...if this was what being the complete opposite of herself was like...she...she wasn't entirely sure she liked it.  
  
Within seconds, though, the strange look was gone. And she knew, in his eyes, she was at least little BJ again. If not, hopefully, grown up Barbara Jean. "Come on, let me find you a seat so you can wait..." His free hand closed around her upper arm and he gently steered her towards a table near the jukebox. "You don't wanna be in a place like this by yourself."  
  
"So why are *you* here alone?" she countered, dropping into a chair with altogether too much grace. Grace was her only excess. And it didn't count for shit.  
  
"Because I'm not innocent, Barbara Jean. I never was."  
  
"Innocence is overrated," she snorted, tossing her head.  
  
He reached across the table's scarred surface and took her hand. His grip was warm and dry and it swallowed her up. "No," he whispered, in a voice choked and husky with what sounded like regret. "No, it really isn't."  
  
***  
  
Somewhere in the last few years, his little sister's best friend had grown up. And he hadn't noticed. To be honest, he'd been a little busy...what with climbing out from under Jason's shadow...fighting Carly for custody of his son... and trying to keep Courtney...but now, here she was. Little Barbara Jean. Tall and slender, her brown hair swinging just above her shoulders. She was trying to look older, more mature, in the tight, slinky, black top and the ripped jeans that barely clung to the points of her hips. But she couldn't hide the shine in her dark blue eyes. The vulnerability. The youth.  
  
No, innocence was not overrated. It was sitting right here in front of him.  
  
He sighed and turned her hand over, staring at the myriad of lines bisecting her palm. He wondered if her lifeline was long, if her loveline was short. If she, like Emily, wanted to eat up as much of life as she could before it...before it...ended. "Don't try to grow up too fast...you'll miss childhood when you're my age," he warned, hating the catch in his voice.  
  
Her fingers curled up to brush his. "Do you miss it?" She was full of questions. So curious. He wondered if she'd inherited that open, honest, optimism from Tony...if *that* was what had attracted Carly all those years ago.  
  
He smiled, bitterly, shaking his head. "I never had it." He'd climbed inside a vodka bottle at fifteen and never crawled back out. "When you're a Quartermaine, being a kid isn't part of the deal. You're a thing. A possession ...and maybe Em...maybe she's lucky she..." He broke off, closing his eyes.  
  
Innocence. Barbara Jean was alive, but his baby sister was dying. By her own choice. No chemo. No radiation. No mastectomy. Just a slow, eventual, death. Surrounded by the people she loved.  
  
Yeah, he hated Zander. A lot.  
  
"AJ..."  
  
"They're not coming, are they?" he asked, softly, when he could speak again. When he could look at her and see *her* eyes, *her* smile. "You lied to me. You came here on your own. Why?"  
  
She didn't even try to deny it. She pulled her hand back, cradling it against her chest, and her eyes turned the color of clouds right before a storm. "For all your lectures about childhood and innocence, AJ...you have no idea what it's like to be me. To be perfect all the time. To never do anything wrong. To be the person holding your family together even when your parents are divorced, your brother's a diabetic idiot, and your sister is married to the local mob boss." Her lips tightened. "I'm sick of being everyone's little BJ."  
  
Oh, yes. He had no idea about the burdens of perfection. No, sirree. Not him, the perpetual Black Sheep. "Then don't be her." He shrugged, saluting her with his nearly-empty glass. "By all means, be whoever you want. Do whatever you want. *Whoever*."  
  
Barbara Jean laughed. And even that sound was light and young and full of life. But her words...her words were something altogether different. She leaned forward, arching a dark, silken, brow, and repeated, huskily, "'Whoever'? Do you mean that, AJ?"  
  
Did he?  
  
He drained his glass, swallowed his tongue, and felt his body jumping to the life for the first time in months. Like a lit match. Ready to burn.  
  
Well, Hell.  
  
Apparently, he did.  
  
***  
  
She had dated Sly steadily all throughout high school. He'd taken her to her senior prom just a few months back. Sly was wicked and sweet and blond... he hadn't fallen particularly far from the Spencer-Eckert tree. They had been named Cutest Couple in the Senior Superlatives...which had been riotously funny to them both since a)Sly had graduated from PC High three years before and b)they hadn't really been *together* together since her sophomore year. The punching incident.  
  
When she got it in her mind to pray, she thanked God that her cousin and her brother hadn't stumbled upon them the first time they had sex. Sly probably wouldn't be alive and joining the Merchant Marines now. She still had vague nightmares of paraplegia and food tubes.  
  
But, yes, there was her secret rebellion. She had slept with her high school sweetheart. Ooh. Everybody did *that*. No big deal. It was one of those things where your family was honor-bound to protest but if the guy was still around during college, you had their blessing to get married. Having danced for almost her entire life, there had been nothing to tear and very little pain and what Sly lacked in experience, he made up for in "Penthouse" letters and enthusiasm.  
  
But AJ...? She had a feeling that all AJ *had* was experience. A lifetime of it. And not all of it good. He was, by no means, the "hottie" in the Quartermaine family. All counts, in that respect, lay on the brooding shoulders of Jason, the leather-wearing mob hitman. But AJ was handsome, almost boyishly so...except for the ruthless glint in his eyes, the self-loathing, and the simple fact that he already knew what it was like to fall from grace.  
  
And that...that was what she'd come to Jake's looking for.  
  
"Well?" She leaned out of the hard wooden chair, staring at him with more than just Bad Girl dress-up working in her favor. "What do you think?"  
  
"A-about what?" Shady character or not, AJ had been raised right and he blushed faintly, dark eyes contracting, as he batted his empty tumbler between his palms.  
  
"Getting out of here. Going some place a little more private." Stripping her naked and banging BJ into oblivion. "I'll let you drink all you want."  
  
"Aww, you're so sweet." He laughed. A short, sharp, bark of a laugh. "You're also *eighteen*. You've had sleepovers with my sister. Don't you think it's a little weird to be wanting one with me?"  
  
"You're, what, thirty? So?" She matched the laugh like an expert mimic, stretching across the table. "And I wasn't planning to sleep. Were you?"  
  
"Do your parents know you talk this way?" And before she could even dignify that with a response, he answered himself, shaking his head. "No, of course they don't. Where do they think you are tonight...hanging out with Em? With Elizabeth?" He sighed, dragging a hand through his hair. "Gotta tell you...there isn't enough booze in the world to make me do something this stupid."  
  
Her agility came in handy as she effortlessly vaulted across the table's surface like it was a an exercise mat and wound up in his lap. "Then do it sober," she suggested, simply.  
  
And just like she expected, the momentum of her body slamming into his was like flint and steel. The pyromaniac couldn't help but let the spark turn into a fire. "Barbara Jean..." he groaned, softly...before he wrapped one firm hand in her hair, lowered her head to his, and kissed her.  
  
***  
  
Somewhere in the back of his head was the thought that the girls he wound up kissing were getting, progressively, younger and younger. But the thought in the front of his head was much more profound: kissing Barbara Jean was incendiary.  
  
And he was going up in smoke.  
  
In the middle of Jake's.  
  
They were plastered together, chest to chest, her trapped in his lap, back arching against the edge of the table. And all he wanted to do was spread her down on it and burn inside her. And the last time he'd gotten this worked up at Jake's, he'd wound up fathering a child with a manipulative slut.  
  
So, the smart thing to do...besides pushing her away and drinking a *lot* of coffee while taking a cold shower...would be to change location. He picked her up, amidst cheers and jeers and wolf whistles, and walked her right out the door. Without even coming up for air.  
  
Her arms linked around his neck and her long, slender legs, closed around his hips and when he slammed her against the wall of the narrow alley out back, the only sound she made was the most gorgeous little moan.  
  
It was that moan that snapped him into some, *some* semblance of rationality. "We can't...we can't do this here," he pointed out, even though it was carefully dark and off the main road.  
  
"I live with my parents," she reminded, chuckling, mouth swollen and begging for more kisses.  
  
"Well fuck." He laughed, breathlessly, leaning his forehead against hers. "So do I."  
  
All right, they *were* going to do this here. But she had come to that conclusion before him and he was gasping when her nimble fingers slipped between them and began to work the fastenings of his pants. Two could play at that game..and he slid one hand down the front of her low- riding jeans.  
  
Her lips trailed along his jaw, tongue rubbing rough against his stubble and she whispered approval in his ear as he stoked her banked fire and burned his fingertips..."Now you're catching on, AJ."  
  
He was in her hot little hands, crackling. "Barbara Jean, you are *so* not who I thought you were," he murmured.  
  
"You're *exactly* who I thought you were," she countered, with something like...like gratitude in her voice.  
  
She led him into the inferno...where he charred, splintered, and burst into ash.  
  
**  
  
TBC. 


	3. With Somebody Who Loves Me

Title: "Dancing in the Dark" 3/?  
  
Author: Mala  
  
E-mail: malisita@yahoo.com  
  
Fandom: "General Hospital"  
  
Rating/Classification: 'R', AU, language, sexual situations, C/M, BJ/AJ,  
  
Disclaimer: Oh, boy. I REALLY don't own them.  
  
Summary: In a slightly alternate timeline, Max Jones hates where she's been and Coleman Radcliff hates where he is. Barbara Jean Jones hates where she is and AJ Quartermaine hates... everything. So, where can they go together besides straight to Hell?  
  
"I'll shake this world off my shoulder." --Bruce Springsteen.  
  
The harsh light of day was supposed to be a time to regret things. But as she stretched out on the soft carpet, touching her toes and arching her back...working out all the kinks of her less than restful night...she didn't regret a damn thing.  
  
Morning was streaming into the curtains of the suite...and she couldn't help but grin as she remembered how she'd waited for five minutes outside the Port Charles Hotel while AJ got his usual away-from-home room before hopping in the elevator and joining him in it.  
  
The alley had been fun for the first time...but after it, there had been no question for both of them that they needed more. Something horizontal. With easy access to condoms. After those pesky initial pangs of guilt, AJ had proved to be exactly...*exactly* what she needed. AJ and his throaty, passionate, whisper of "Barbara Jean."  
  
She was Barbara Jean and she was going to get the Hell out of Port Charles and become the most famous ballerina in the Western Hemisphere.  
  
And maybe, just maybe, she was going to take this man with her.  
  
It was a stupid thing to think after something that was, virtually, one Hell of a one night stand. A stupid thing...but the right thing.  
  
"Warm-ups?" The sleepy murmur came from the depths of the bed. The telltale dark hair, sticking up in tufts, told her that her quiet daily ritual had been under observation for at least a few minutes.  
  
"Yeah," she chuckled, softly, standing up and shaking out. "I'm about to dance 'Swan Lake'. We're doing an experimental nude version for my next recital."  
  
AJ pushed the sheets aside, smiling ruefully, as he moved to get up. "Are you always this sarcastic in the morning?"  
  
"Mmmm...only after mindblowing sex."  
  
Which was, why, she thought, as she pounced on him and pinned him to the mattress, she'd never been particularly sarcastic before. With silent apologies to Sly, she leaned down and gave his welcome successor a thorough, open-mouthed 'good morning' kiss. He cradled her head in his hands and kissed her back, and she couldn't help but marvel at how he was firm and muscled under those preppy clothes...how, when he let himself smile, he had an adorable pair of dimples.  
  
"You're gorgeous," she told him, nipping at his lower lip as he shifted more intimately between her thighs.  
  
And, just as she'd hoped, his dimples flashed. "So are you."  
  
Laying sprawled on his chest, she felt completely new. Different. Grown into her skin. And just...just a little bit wicked. She was supposed to be "over at Elizabeth's" until ten. The red display on the digital hotel clock said it was 7:58. And she longed for the days when she wouldn't have a mom to come home to, to keep track of her whereabouts. Even if she didn't place in the incoming class of the American Ballet, she had a spot waiting for her at Columbia. Either way, New York City. Either way, not soon enough.  
  
"You should come with me," she said into the salty hollow of AJ's collarbone before she could stop herself. He kissed the top of her head, running his hand up and down her bare back. "Come with you where? Breakfast? I don't think your mother would let me in the door."  
  
"No, to the city. We could get married and live in the Village and have sex in alleys all night long." She glanced up into his eyes...noticing that they were suddenly blank and frightening again. "I'm...I'm joking," she recovered, quickly, forcing a smile. "Totally kidding."  
  
And his fingertips against her cheek were chilled. "No, you're not." He sighed, kissing her forehead and then the tip of her nose, but the comfort was gone...even his lips felt icy. "You're not nearly as bad as you want to be, Barbara Jean," he informed. "And I'm far worse."  
  
"Which is why a change of scenery might do us *both* good," she countered, breathing warm, as if the simple hotness of her mouth against his could start his internal fire again.  
  
He tilted his face to the side, avoiding the contact. "My family thinks I'm worthless, I'm *never* going to quit drinking, and I have three ex- wives and an eight-year-old son. All of whom hate me."  
  
"Three ex-wives, huh?" She grinned, undaunted, grinding against his hips. "You know what they say, AJ...fourth time's the charm."  
  
When he looked at her again, it was with his pupils contracting with shock and desire. In lieu of a crash cart and 200 ccs of something-or-other, there was only one way she knew to drain the cold fear from his bones...and as he sank deep inside her, he gasped, damply, against her throat, "Sweetheart ...you're the charm."  
  
***  
  
Waking up in a strange bed, in a strange building, had been scarier than walking into the Oasis and taking off her shirt.  
  
Max wasn't sure exactly what that said about her as a person. And she really wasn't going to spend too long finding out.  
  
True to his word, Coleman had been right about Jake. The slightly faded blond woman had given her the once-over, told her rent was due at the end of the month, and said as long as she didn't turn tricks upstairs...no one cared what her name was and what her business was in Port Charles. Accepting a key to the last room on the right, she'd pushed through the throng of boozehounds, nearly running over some tall, skinny, brunette...but she hadn't wanted to stop and apologize...afraid that one more word out of her throat was going to choke it.  
  
And now, here she was.  
  
She'd slept in worse places. Tents on the Serengheti. The backseat of a car. The room was clean, had a small window that let in the sunshine, and had, as far as she could tell, no roaches. But she had barely slept at all.  
  
Probably because every time she closed her eyes, she saw Coleman. *His* eyes, wide open and black. His hands. She saw herself, standing topless in front of him...in his arms. And she heard herself saying things...things that no child of Frisco and Felicia Jones had said before. Things that she wanted to say again.  
  
She showered quickly in the tiny, utilitarian bathroom, glad for the two threadbare towels and soap, and pulled her jeans from the night before on over clean undies. She'd been afraid to bring more than a few changes of clothes ...because the more shit she carried, the slower she would be able to move from place to place. A bra and a tight, beige, top with a plunging neckline were two more of her rations...necessary, too, for what she was doing today.  
  
She wanted to linger by Kelly's, could smell the tempting scents of fresh muffins and apple pie through the panes in the door. And her aunt's bright red head bobbing behind the counter was equal parts warning and a tug of "home," and "warm," and "safe."  
  
Bobbie Spencer. Full of love.  
  
And mere speed dial away from her grandmother.  
  
She swallowed misery and kept going. Two turns, hurrying down the Elm Street Pier, three more blocks...and another door that might...might lead to the point of no return.  
  
But the front door to the Oasis was open and it gave way for her before she could second-guess herself...so she took a deep breath and went on through.  
  
The sexy hostess, Lorena, was absent this time around. There was no music, no raucous cheering...just silence. And when she tiptoed into the show room, the house lights were low, the t-shaped stage was dark...but Coleman was there. Behind the bar. Waiting. The dark circles under his eyes matched the black half-moons on his white silk shirt.  
  
"I said 'tonight'," he murmured, not even looking up. "It's 8:30 in the morning. You hock your watch?"  
  
"I...uh..." She shifted from foot to foot, flushing, wondering where all her bravado had gone. It had abandoned her in the daylight.  
  
"Shut up, Baby Doll. When's the last time you ate?" he demanded with a weary growl.  
  
That was when she noticed the steaming plate of scrambled eggs in front of him.  
  
"The day before yesterday," she admitted, timidly. She'd had toast at a diner in St. Louis when the bus stopped for a fifteen-minute break.  
  
"Sit down," he directed, gruffly, with a wave of his hand. "I knew you'd have nowhere else to go."  
  
Oh...he didn't know the half of it.  
  
She slid onto a stool and gratefully accepted the fork he held out. He watched her shovel the fragrant, cheese-laden eggs into her mouth with a small, satisfied, smile...and the same black-eyed heaviness with which he'd watched her begin to strip.  
  
She'd never realized that the act of eating could be so...intimate. Or that this simple plate of eggs could be the best thing she'd ever tasted.  
  
Max was suddenly...suddenly struck by the horrible idea that she'd run away from her stupidly adventurous parents and the placid hacienda for *this*. For *him.*.  
  
And she choked.  
  
"Easy there, Baby Doll. You'll make yourself sick."  
  
She swallowed. Accepted water. And through the haze of pain and tears and the concentrated effort to breathe, she knew that wasn't the problem.  
  
Being with Coleman...this scruffy man in an ugly shirt...she was fucking terrified that she was perfectly well.  
  
*** Ten o'clock came too quickly. And AJ dropped her one block from the Brownstone with a regretful kiss on her forehead. Not even her mouth. She couldn't help but feel like it was...good-bye. So, she clung to him, pleaded like the high school girl she still was, "Call me."  
  
And he didn't say he would. He simply got out, opened the door for her, and pointed towards her mother's front steps.  
  
She may have made the transition into full-on Bad Girl...but she knew...she knew ...somehow...she had started him on the path to being a very Good Man.  
  
And she couldn't even hate herself for that.  
  
But when she let herself into the house, hollering, "I'm home," and pasting on the fake, cheery, smile, there *was* one thing hated herself for. For going back to the lies.  
  
"Mom's at Kelly's," Lucas informed, sullenly, from his typical spot on the couch. There was practically a spot carved out for his bony ass and she wanted to turn around and run back out and chase down AJ's BMW, pleading for him to fuck her again until she couldn't think, couldn't *be*.  
  
"Shouldn't you be at school?" she snapped, dropping her purse on the floor.  
  
"Teacher in service, remember?" he shot back...which had been her own reason for having her infamous "sleep over." Well, that and Senior Privilege.  
  
She sighed, aching and cranky and wanting to be back in AJ's embrace. The one place...the one place where she didn't have to pretend. The one place where she could shatter and be broken and he would pick up the pieces and kiss every one of them. Just like she'd kissed every inch of him.  
  
She had walked into Jake's expecting...something earthshaking. Something to tell her she wasn't BJ anymore but grown-up Barbara Jean. And what she had found instead was the simple, beautiful, truth... that she was a woman.  
  
***  
  
He had expected to see her early. Hence the eggs. It had cleared his mind to be back in the club's tiny kitchen, cracking the shells and feeling the yolk and white sticky on his fingers. But he hadn't...he hadn't expected to see her so...so damn fucking young.  
  
If she had been barely fifteen standing in his office...freshly-scrubbed, without make-up, and with that scared rabbit look in her eyes, she was twelve. With an appetite like a growing kid. She polished off the entire plate in less than five minutes.  
  
He'd always appreciated a woman with an appetite. Lorena had been known to finish off an entire large pizza--the works--and a six pack of beer all by herself. But Max...Max wasn't a woman. Not yet.  
  
Even if she was built like one and kissed like one and felt like one in his arms.  
  
His stomach lurched and he had to turn away and he was glad when she went to wash up.  
  
But he was infinitely worse off when she came back with lipstick and mascara and that coy older girl's stare. When she began to tug at her sleeves, at the hem of the skin-tight halter top...and he came from around the bar and grabbed her, shaking her, hissing, "*Tonight.*" He swallowed his insane, stupid male, urge to kiss her blind...to take her to that stage and lay her out and lick the inside of her soft thigh, and reminded her, "Tonight is hours away, Baby Doll. Keep your clothes on."  
  
It was a desperate plea.  
  
She countered it with that trembling mouth. Those false eyes. "But...but...Coleman..."  
  
"Don't give me that!" He made a slashing gesture with his hand, glad to have an excuse to not touch her...to not hold her. "You *could* have waitressed. You could've gotten a job at the movie theater downtown. But no...no, you plant yourself on my doorstep, in my hands, and you bring nothing but Hellfire down on my head." He groaned, shuddering. "What did I ever do to you? I know I ain't no Puritan, no saint...but I do not deserve five years for statutory and the police taking my club away."  
  
She winced. Sixteen. Beautiful. Innocent. Stepped back, allowing him at least that space. "I can't," she whispered, sudden tears trembling on the edges of her long lashes. "They...I..." She drew in a deep breath, wrapped her arms around her skinny little waist. "My parents," she said, finally. "They're ...amazing, you know? These world traveling secret agents. And...they didn't want me with them...I couldn't live with them...or with my grandma, pretending my life was normal and perfect. So I came here." Her voice broke. "I lived here for the first few years of my life. My aunt Bobbie still lives here...my uncle Tony... their kids...and it...it felt like...it felt right..."  
  
Bobbie. Tony. Jones. People he knew. People who had helped save his life. He clenched inside. Reached out and steadied himself on the bar. Oh, Man. Oh, God. Oh holy fucking God. "Baby Doll...Max..." he whispered...  
  
But she wouldn't stop. Kept driving in the nails. "I couldn't go see them. I knew they'd call Texas and send me back home. And I saw the sign...the lights...it was an *Oasis*, Coleman." Tears were slipping down her cheeks now. Honest tears, no games. "I didn't mean...I didn't want...to hurt anyone...I just...I just...wanted to get away."  
  
In the face of those open sobs...he wasn't strong enough. No, he wasn't a Puritan. He wasn't a saint. He was just a man. A weak, weak, man who would be burning when the time came for judgment. He closed the few steps that separated them, pulled her into his arms, and whispered, "Shhh...shhh, it's okay," into her hair, rocking her against his chest. "Come on, Baby Doll...you're all right. You *are* safe. This is always...always...gonna be your Oasis..." Incoherent things. Promises he couldn't keep.   
  
And he was stupid...so stupid...because his instinct to soothe her led to her wet little mouth on his face...trailing across his cheeks, his chin, landing on his mouth. And he was lost.  
  
He lifted her up, crushing her to him, staggering through the mess of tables to the edge of the stage. As he laid her down, sucking the sadness from her tongue, he hoped...he hoped to God she wouldn't hate him when all was said and done.  
  
***  
  
He hadn't made love to anyone since Courtney left. Since the ink on the divorce papers had long gone dry. He hadn't expected to. But Barbara Jean Jones... with the shadow of his sister in her face...had defied any kind of expectation.  
  
As a Quartermaine, expectation was his life. Living up to potential. Being Somebody. Son, brother, father...businessman. Sober. But all he'd had to be for Barbara Jean was a warm body, strength and laughter.  
  
That was all she'd wanted from him last night. All she wanted from him now. Even as he stood on the threshold of his family's mansion, listening to the thundering arguments filtering from inside, he knew that...he knew that such a thing was a gift.  
  
One he did not deserve.  
  
Emily...Emily deserved gifts. Life. Happiness. Love. Even if it was with that loser Zander. Who, yes, he still hated. His sister was pure and sweet and giving. She was strong for her family and still wanted so much for herself. He'd seen the same qualities in the girl he'd been with last night.  
  
Which probably made him even more fucked up than even he'd originally thought. But he knew...he knew that oblivion in the bottom of a glass of Absolut or Jack Daniels was far more fucked up. He did.  
  
Twelve steps. Twelve long steps.  
  
It had been more than that from the doorway of the hotel room to the soft, cozy bed. It had been less than that from her soft, rosy, mouth to the flat expanse of her belly and beyond.  
  
He hadn't needed a can of gasoline and matches to make it all burn. He had just needed her body entwined with his against bricks, under cotton sheets.  
  
He dropped his hand from the doorknob and turned...walked back down the long, winding drive.  
  
He drove, stone cold sober, towards the Brownstone. Where Bobbie would probably rail at him and attempt to keep any women and children off the stairs. Where Tony might be waiting with a shotgun. Where his best, last, and only true addiction was waiting.  
  
***  
  
TBC. 


	4. The Safety Dance

Title: "Dancing in the Dark" 4/4  
  
Author: Mala  
  
E-mail: malisita@yahoo.com  
  
Fandom: "General Hospital"  
  
Rating/Classification: 'R', AU, language, sexual situations, C/M, BJ/AJ,  
  
Disclaimer: Oh, boy. I REALLY don't own them.  
  
Summary: In a slightly alternate timeline, Max Jones hates where she's been and Coleman Radcliff hates where he is. Barbara Jean Jones hates where she is and AJ Quartermaine hates... everything. So, where can they go together besides straight to Hell?  
  
"I'll shake this world off my shoulder."--Bruce Springsteen.  
  
Her best friend had maybe six months to live. Graduation was in two weeks. Her final round of auditions was in four days. And her heart was going to break in an hour.  
  
These were certainties.  
  
Barbara Jean was used to certainties. Because that was what her life consisted of. Knowing when she was getting up in the morning, what time she had what class, how many times a day her brother took insulin, when her father had legal visitation, and how her mother's schedule was split between the hospital and Kelly's. Knowing how many minutes she had to stretch out before attempting a perfect pirouette, how long to hold an extension, and when her toe shoes needed to be replaced.  
  
Last night, she had tried to do something that couldn't be scheduled, plotted on a calendar. And all she had really done was set herself up for disappointment.  
  
Now, she could be absolutely certain that AJ Quartermaine was out of her ife.  
  
She sighed, flopping down on the couch and shoving Lucas's stinky feet inside. And then the doorbell rang...so amidst his grumbles, she shoved his feet right back again and leapt up. Probably a prospective renter. One of the terrace apartments was available. She worked the locks and yanked the paneled door open, putting on her best professional smile.  
  
Which automatically shifted into a genuine goofy grin the size of the Port Charles River. "AJ!" So much for certainties! "What are you doing here?"  
  
He was leaning, sheepishly, on the doorframe, scuffing at the ground with the toe of one polished loafer. "Can I interest you in a copy of the Watchtower?"  
  
She muffled a giggle against her palm...and shot a dirty look over her shoulder at the interjected, "What's *he* doing here?"  
  
"Shut up, Lucas. Go upstairs," she snapped as she ushered AJ inside. And when she was answered by a rude mumble and the pounding of Nikes on the stairs, AJ muffled a more masculine variation on a giggle.  
  
"He didn't want to become a Jevohah's Witness?"  
  
"Jehovah's *witless*, maybe," she allowed. "I can't wait to go away to school."  
  
His dark eyebrows knitted together thoughtfully. "So...you'll have to find an apartment in Manhattan..." he began.  
  
She laughed, cautiously. "I'd planned on it, yeah."  
  
His eyes twinkled with deep warmth. "Need some help looking?"  
  
She tried to keep her heart from leaping. Bad girls didn't leap. They rocked back and look smug. But she leapt anyway...smugly. "What are you going to do? Check the fire codes?"  
  
He chuckled, reaching out and brushing a few strands of her hair out of her face. And his fingertips weren't icy at all. They felt wonderful against her skin. "I thought you were only sarcastic after great sex?"  
  
"Preemptive strike," she said, unable to keep from grinning as she wrapped her arms around him. "Chalk it up to my infallible optimism." And infallible optimism turned very, very fallible, when the front door was suddenly flung open and her father stormed into the living room. "What the Hell is going on here? BJ? Why is that man here?"  
  
Oh. Shit. This was so much worse than Lucky throwing a few punches. So. Much. Worse. AJ wouldn't need a food tube and a wheelchair when her dad was done with him. He'd need a coffin.  
  
She set her jaw and kept herself, firmly, between them.  
  
"I...I came by to talk to Barbara Jean about Emily," AJ lied, immediately. And it cost him. She could see the fringes of frost on his eyelashes. "She...she's been kind to my family during a really difficult time and I wanted to give her an update on Em's condition."  
  
There were no updates. She'd checked her messages after coming home. Emily was simply herself. Coping beautifully. Loving passionately. Wanting to know if she'd taken any chances.  
  
And she had. Once.  
  
So she would again.  
  
"He's lying, Dad," she said, evenly. "AJ came to see me because we were together last night."  
  
Because they'd been together last night...and perfect in their mutual imperfection. Partners in a pas des deux. Flint and steel.  
  
She wasn't going to give that up. Not when she'd just found it.  
  
Not when she finally knew exactly who she was.  
  
Barbara Jean. Just Barbara Jean.  
  
Her own person.  
  
***  
  
Crying all over herself and telling Coleman all about her stupid family had not been part of her plan. No, letting people know what you were running away from... it didn't facilitate you getting any farther from it.  
  
But what it had done...was bring her closer. To him. Wrapped up in his arms and his lips and the safe-wild sense that this was right. She'd meant it when she said he was her oasis. And maybe he didn't believe her...didn't *want* to believe her...but he couldn't resist her. And she had to keep counting on that.  
  
Not that she could count anything at all with his drugging kisses scrambling her brain, just like he'd scrambled the eggs, and his hands slipping beneath her blouse, spanning her rib cage...fingers stroking up and down her sides.  
  
She tugged, frantically, at his shirt and he shook his head. "Hey...hey, slow down."  
  
"I can't...please...." And she wasn't even sure what she was pleading for. No...no she was... she'd never been more sure of anything. "Gimme just a minute, Max..." he said, raggedly, against her throat, before he drew away, leaving her. "I...I have to get something."  
  
The minutes he was gone felt like an eternity and the hot lights pounding down on her, coupled with the cool stage against her back, made her feel like a sweat-soaked, boneless mass of nerves.  
  
And then he was back...lifting her up into his lap, cradling her close, holding her so tightly she couldn't breathe...didn't want to. And she was suddenly realizing that this...*this*...chest to chest, breath entangled, sensation... was probably why her mother followed her father to the ends of the earth and back. *This* was why she couldn't come with them, couldn't share it. *This* could only belong to two people at a time.   
  
This...was Coleman pressing a soft kiss to her forehead, murmuring, "Baby Doll," like it was his last prayer. And chasing it with an "I'm sorry."  
  
And her body instinctively went still. Her heart skidded to a full stop. "You're...sorry?" she repeated. "Why are you sorry?"  
  
He averted his eyes. So she couldn't see the black heat of desire fade.  
  
And in that instant, she knew.  
  
Max Jones did *not* chicken out.  
  
But Coleman...? Had done exactly that.  
  
He released her in a painstakingly slow series of beats and climbed off the extended part of the stage. So he was a good six feet away from her when her aunt Bobbie walked in.  
  
She barely heard him whisper, "You have to go home. You can't be here," over the blood rushing against her eardrums...and when she would've spat, "I AM home," Bobbie was coming forward to take her arm and help her down.  
  
"Oh, Honey...Maxie...look at you...why didn't you tell us you were here?" her aunt wondered without rancor, without accusation.  
  
But that was a Spencer-Jones, for you. With a family full of lunatics and ex-hookers and vagabonds, nothing surprised them...not even their teenage niece looking ravished in the middle of a strip club.  
  
At least a lecture would have drowned out the sound of her heart breaking. The sound of...the only person she had ever trusted enough to strip herself bare for...betraying her. But she couldn't even have that small distraction.  
  
She choked, staring at him, miserably, as she was tugged past. "Aunt Bobbie, wait...no..."  
  
"Hush, Honey. It's okay. Mariah must be worried sick...we'll call her as soon as we get home."  
  
She hadn't run away from her life. She had run *to* it.  
  
"Coleman..."  
  
His tone was impersonal, gruff. "If you want to dance for me, Miss Texas... you come back when it's the right time." But oh...oh, his eyes were still black. He still wanted her. Maybe...maybe he would always want her...  
  
She stumbled and Bobbie held her up, helped her keep moving.away. As far away from him as she could get.  
  
The right time wasn't now. She just hoped that it was soon.  
  
Before she hated him even more than she did at this moment.  
  
And before she hated herself.  
  
***  
  
"BJ, I don't know what you think AJ Quartermaine can give you, but I can assure you it'll include criminal charges, the loss of your sanity, and some sort of addiction. Please ask him to leave before I throw him out."  
  
It was Barbara Jean's cue to cut him loose, to say good-bye. Her eyes were deep sea blue with tears, with choices, and standing between him, someone she barely knew, and her father...how could she possibly choose anything but family?  
  
They'd had a nice night. Something she could take to New York with her in a few weeks. Something he could...he could...bury deep inside, with all his grief and all his other failures. But that was it.  
  
Another woman was not going to be caught between him and Tony Jones. A drunken rock and an anal hard place. "Y-you can't throw him out," she stammered. And then she drew a breath and he recognized that steel in her eyes. The same conviction that had preceded her vaulting the table and attacking him. "This is Mom's property, not yours. So, unless you want to call her..."  
  
Tony shook his heard, sharply, his mouth tightening. "Fine. Fine, if you don't want to see my side of it...if you want to use your mother as your defense...let's talk about what he did to your mother's other daughter." Gone was the open, child-like kindness that AJ had thought Barbara Jean inherited. This was ice. Something that Barbara Jean didn't traffic in. "This is the man who pushed Carly down the stairs and made her lose a child."  
  
This was probably the point in arguments where BJ caved. AJ knew he'd done the same himself...and, Hell, he was tempted to hightail it out the door...because Tony's weaponry was almost, almost as effective as his grandfather's. Every sin...every weakness...put on display.  
  
But, all of a sudden, Barbara Jean's hand closed around his. "You'd push Carly down a set of stairs, too, if you could." And she squeezed it tight. "Didn't you kidnap Michael once, Dad?" she asked, softly. "Her and AJ's baby? What are you afraid of? That he's getting revenge by kidnapping yours?"   
  
Oh, wow. Talk about weaponry. Little Barbara Jean was one big flame thrower.  
  
When her father stopped stock still in the middle of his self-righteous rant, she danced past him so gracefully that AJ had no choice but to move in tandem.  
  
Barbara Jean smiled. A strong smile. "I'm not a baby anymore. I'm not your little girl anymore. I'm not good and perfect. I'm just *me*. And I know what I want." She looked askance at him, and then leaned in and kissed his mouth. "And I'm kidnapping AJ. We're going apartment hunting, he's going to watch me do a nude 'Swan Lake', and then we'll have sex somewhere public. I'll be back next week for school." Before he knew what was happening, they were outside on the steps, with a firmly slammed door separating him from imminent death at the hands of his girlfriend's father.  
  
His *girlfriend's* father?  
  
AJ felt the grin heat up his face like a blaze.  
  
And when he spun her into his arms and lowered his mouth to hers, it turned into nuclear meltdown.  
  
***  
  
The glass made a satisfying crash-and-splinter noise against the floor ...and he kept going...shoving tumblers and pints and bottles every which way until they all hit the floor in the key of Fuck Major.  
  
As her aunt had tugged her out the door with sympathetic clucks and murmurs of "Don't worry, Maxie...I'll make sure you don't get in *too* much trouble," Miss Max had looked back at him...eyes full of his betrayal...and she'd been legal. Not fifteen. Not sixteen. With his mouth on her skin and one phone call, he had sent her straight to a jaded thirty-five.  
  
The girl who'd walked into his life last night had been innocent. The woman who'd walked out had been anything but. Thanks to him.  
  
He wanted to scream. To howl. To hit something, so he did...and the mirror behind the bar shuddered and gave way, raining reflective glass down all over him. The blood on his hands...it was nothing compared to the taste of her.  
  
And right on cue, Lorena appeared with a broom. Probably what she'd arrived riding. "You sent her home? She'll get over it," she murmured, beginning to sweep up. Funny how she only did things like serve him drinks or clean when she was feeling smug.  
  
"She'll get over it?" he repeated, swallowing hard, dabbing at the cuts with a bar napkin. "She'll get OVER it?" He laughed and it was an ugly sound. Not tinkling and musical like the glass breaking. "I don't think *I'll* get over it."  
  
"Coleman." She stalled with the happy homemaker routine, lines of distress crinkling her smooth forehead. "The whole thing was a joke, all right? She was a kid and you sent her home. You did the right thing."  
  
He never hollered at his girls. Never raised a hand to them. But Lorena Parker was a special case, right? So when he threw the pint glass, he made sure to miss. And it shattered just inches from her right foot, making her jump. "The right thing? Fuck you." He flattened his palms on the bar, leaning over it, uncaring of the fact that he was now bleeding all over the Formica. "Fuck you." And if the words were a little choked, a little wet, he didn't care. "Do you hate me so much, 'Rena? Do you hate me so much that you had to kill me this way?"  
  
"Oh, Cole." She shook her head, letting the broom fall into the neat pile of glass she'd accumulated, and slowly came around the bar. He wanted to shrug her away as she wrapped her arms around him from behind, but instead he leaned back against her...because he wasn't sure he could keep standing without help. "Honey, I'm sorry...I'm so sorry..."  
  
Sorry? So was he. So. Damn. Sorry.  
  
"Hey...hey..." Lorena soothed, gently, and he could feel her sudden smile against his back. "Max isn't me, remember?"  
  
Yeah, he thanked God he only had one psycho bitch in his life. "What...what does that have to do with anything?" he wondered, hoarsely.  
  
She grasped his face in her fingers and forcibly turned his head so he could see the knowing blue light in her eyes. "I was smart enough to divorce you," she reminded. "She's so dumb...she'll come back."  
  
He was still laughing when she got him to the ER.  
  
And he didn't tell her...*couldn't*...that he believed her.  
  
Instead, he waited.  
  
And tried not to die a little inside every time the door to his office opened and it wasn't Mariah Maxmiliana Jones standing there with a prepared packet of lies.  
  
***  
  
"Dammit, Lorena, you stupid bitch! I told you, no interruptions tonight!" he growled when the office door swung open, not looking up from the profit margins he was studying.  
  
The noticeable lack of a "Fuck off, you shithead!" was what made him finally glance up.  
  
There was more of a sharp angle to her features, less of one at her hips. And it was patently obvious that she still didn't believe in bras. But it was her eyes... her beautiful dark, achingly familiar eyes...that made the papers slip from his hand.  
  
The first three things out of her little rosebud mouth were the God's honest truth.  
  
"My name's Max. I'm eighteen. And I want to strip."  
  
She pulled a neatly folded birth certificate from the back pocket of her new, glittery, jeans. He didn't have to glance down at it to know the dates were typed clearly.  
  
And the fourth thing out of her mouth...was more than he deserved.  
  
"I...uh...I think I might love you."  
  
As she began to pull off her top, he crossed the room, stalled her with a kiss he'd been holding for two years...and whispered, roughly, "'Bout damn time you learned to tell the truth, Baby Doll."  
  
--end--  
  
April 23, 2003. 


End file.
